A Roadmap to Sustainable Development

The sustainability criteria developed by the Center of Sustainable Technology Practices (CSTP), a subgroup of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), is a tool to be used by chemical companies to help them with implementation of sustainability considerations in designing a new product and/or a new process. To account for all issues involving sustainability, organizations need to consider issues encompassing the complete life cycle of a product or project and the impacts either one would have on the social and environmental surroundings.

The CSTP's Sustainable Development (SD) Roadmap is expected to become a generic model that industry can use it in the thought process of introducing a new product to the market or undertaking a new project. In the process, CSTP realized that considering all issues concerning sustainability requires in depth analysis of multiple components. The SD Roadmap streamlines these components through a categorized list of questions that thoroughly evaluate the sustainability of the considered product or project. The categorization of the Roadmap allows users to evaluate sustainability in an organized and documented manner.

We have tested the SD Roadmap to evaluate its completeness and user friendliness by applying the tool to the sustainability of ethanol fuel derived from biomass, corn and willow in particular. Our use of the tool consisted of answering all questions related to two categories (from a total of 15) namely, the Upstream Input and Commercialization of the bioethanol. We concluded that in the examined two categories, the SD Roadmap is relatively comprehensive and user friendly. While the model can use some fine tuning, it persuade attention to issues concerning sustainability.